Tag Archives: Advent

This is the first year I got a Christmas tree for my apartment. After the mayhem of graduate school and locking down a job in New Haven, it seemed fitting to at last claim my rootedness in this space. It’s a live tree—something I’ve always wanted. My family’s Christmas trees were never real because Caspian and Callisto, our family cats, enjoyed climbing branches a bit too much. And the tree smells wonderful: clean and heady, as only pine can smell. Cinnamon spice ornaments and pomanders (oranges studded with whole cloves) further incense the experience. I cannot properly articulate how wonderful it is to come home from a stressful day at the office and breathe in the spicy sweetness of my living room.

And as I inhale, I think about the contradiction of the Advent season here in New England. Its weather is cold but its spirit is warm, it is darkened by early nights and lightened by the soft glow of candles. Yet above all these contradictions, Advent is a time of focusing. Because of the cold and the dark, I think we reach out more intentionally to life, bringing growing things—like Christmas trees—into our homes. Pungent reminders that even in the deathly dormancy of December, there is potential for life and new experiences.

One of my first Christmas gifts came earlier this week. After a lively lunch, a dear friend of mine handed me a long, cardboard tube.

“I had to give you your Christmas present today,” she said. “You’ll see why when you get home.”

And I did.

Rolled up inside the tube were six sheets of paper, lined with the images of colorful, gilded book bindings—lovely antique visions from the Bodleian Library’s Christmas Book Collection. My friend was right, she had to give me my Christmas present early. As a librarian with a deep partiality for exquisite, old books, how could I wrap my Christmas presents for family and friends in anything else?

I delightedly texted my friend, thanking her for her thoughtfulness. As I hit send, I reflected on just how wonderful a gift it was. Gifts can be rather singular and rather private in nature. A gift passes from you to a friend. If your friend likes it, or even if she does not, your gift will spend the rest of its existence inside your friend’s home, visible to only those your friend permits over her dwelling’s threshold. But that is not how wrapping paper works. It longs to know not just one of your friends, but all of them, as well as your family and co-workers. It wants to chat with others, rather loudly, about the nature of your friendship with the friend who gave you the paper in the first place. For each object that you wrap with the jolly print, becomes an introduction to your other friend when the receiver exclaims: “What lovely paper!” You can then reply: “Thank you, my friend Sally got it for me. She’s also a librarian. You really must meet someday, I think you two would get on well.”

The gift under the paper may be singular, but the wrapping paper wants to be everybody’s friend and happily wishes that everybody else also wants to be friends with each other. As I hope C.S. Lewis would quip, if he had written The Four Gifts rather than The FourLoves—wrapping paper is the least jealous of the gifts, always ready to extend its cheer and warmth to all.

What a fine way to introduce the wrapping paper giver to others I admire and love. And, what a fine way to start the Christmas season.

Writing can be tough; especially, when I’ve been looking at a white, blank screen for hours. But, there is also a joy and an anticipation in those silent moments. I always hope that something wonderful will soon appear on that empty screen, making the wait worth it.

In my latest piece for HartfordFAVS, I explore the ways that writing, my city, and the Advent season all wait for something to be created out of nothing.

Waiting in American lines makes me anxious. The New York City subway system always reminds me of this. When the train pulls in, people huddle on line in bloated, snake-like waves. There is barely enough room for those in the soiled cars to squeeze out before a large wall of flesh counter-shoves its way into the daily commute.

How can I be calm when those subway doors open? Especially when thoughts begin to shove for precedence in my brain. Thoughts like:

“Ugh, I hope we all move faster, I don’t want to be crushed by the doors.”

“Seriously? They seriously expect more people to fit into that car? I should have brought some Crisco with me.”

“Wow, I think I just got called a freckled whore in Welsh. And I don’t have freckles.”

The experience becomes even worse when I am with someone. Then, I end up worrying about the safety of my companion. Heaven forbid if you get separated by those automatic doors…

How can I be calm when those subway doors open?

Those stuffy, sweaty New York tunnels make me pine for the London Underground. There, when a train pulled into the station, people neatly lined up on either side of the car door, giving fellow passengers a wide birth to alight. If someone bumped into you as you silently moved from platform to car, they would quickly mutter “sorry.” Of course, “sorry” could have the same connotations as the f-word, depending on the inflection–but, even in their annoyance, my fellow passengers contributed to a traveling environment that was quiet and respectful. I never felt anxious in the London Underground. Unlike New York, I got to experience waiting for my train without anxiety or fear.

For most of my life, I wait like I am on line in a New York subway rather than in the London Underground. Questions like these daily plague my mind:

“Am I saving enough money?”

“Am I advancing professionally in a timely manner?”

“Am I choosing my friends and lovers wisely?”

Yet, in the midst of swirling anxiety and fear I know that I am not alone. Others struggle with this as well. Henri Nouwen once wrote that it is hard to give up control of our lives and allow for God to define us, “trusting that God molds us according to God’s love and not according to our fear.”

What a beautiful thought: defining our lives by expansive Divine love and hope rather than by jostling fear and anxiety. Thoughts I find comforting to ponder this first week of Advent. I must wait this month not in fear of my life’s constant questions, but in peace. For it is the very act of God made flesh that creates a quiet space for renewal and redemption on earth.